Eight members of the Hart family were reported killed when their vehicle travelled off the Pacific Coast Highway near Westport California.

We should come to  accept that speculation will always exist, in one form or another, in the thoughts of many persons when objective facts about a tragedy are not available. This is the case when a SUV was reportedly “discovered” at the bottom of a 30 metre cliff of the Pacific West Coast highway just north of Westport, California on Monday, March 26, 2018. The news reports would suggest that 5 members of the eight-member Hart family were found with the vehicle while police were still looking for the remains of the other three.

Reports indicate that the Hart family was uncommon. Led by two, 39-year-old women who adopted six children. Some described them in glowing terms while others did not. The news media report that a children’s agency was in the process of investigating the possible mistreatment of the children when the collision occurred. The obvious speculation is that the collision was caused on purpose as some kind of mass suicide. Yet, up to this point, police have reported nothing unusual which would suggest a purposeful act. Regardless, the damage has been done.

Matters like these are not uncommon, not just in collisions but in all walks of life. If not for the bazaar behaviour of an American president we would not have been exposed to the term “fake news” nor would we have begun to think about its meaning. We are truly a unique species in that we can create our own reality and make ourselves believe things that have no rational basis. While many of us profess to be non-religious, we follow a religious-like belief system that is made up of certain superior beings with titles and robes and pagentry in whom we have total faith. Whether these be news representatives whom we have come to trust, police who can always be trusted, or doctors or priests and so on. All with titles and positions whom we have come to believe and trust not because of the facts they tell us, but solely because of who they are. That is not a wise or healthy approach.

In the analysis of motor vehicle collisions we are constantly provided with the observations of witnesses. Some are very reliable and truthful, and some are not. The problem is that, without proper confirmation by objective analysis, we have no idea which witness is reporting reliable information and which is giving us a fairy tale, or whether the truth lies somewhere in-between. It is the meticulous process of identifying and gathering objective evidence that gives us the opportunity to be “quite sure” that the witness information is reliable.

Unfortunately, those gatherers and identifiers of objective evidence are not of equal capability, training and experience and here lies a second quagmire. There are many who like to be looked upon as capable, well-trained and experienced and who gather many credentials, much like the titles, robes and pagentry noted above, so that this smoke and mirrors will prevent a properly detailed study of what they have gathered and identified. Unfortunately, our experience is such that we cannot accept what previous investigators or analysts have reported on face value simply because of the many times that those investigators and analysts have provided unreliable information. In 37 years of analysis and through the review of the actions of a large number of witnesses, investigators and analysts, we have come to this conclusion not because of our bias but because our experience demonstrates this.

Going back to the incident of the Hart family’s tragedy, all we have of (seemingly) objective information is that the family perished due to their vehicle’s fall from the highway cliff. We cannot be certain of even this one item since any kind of purposeful action by others could make this tragedy seem like an accident when it was not. So a close study of the evidence such as the injuries sustained by each occupant would be needed along with evidence inside the vehicle. Obviously a downloading of data from the vehicle’s event  data recorder (“black box”) might provide useful information If it is interpreted properly.

The matter of the reported lack of tire marks must also be viewed with caution as many investigators simply do not have enough experience in using proper procedures or understanding what it is they should be looking for because they simply lack the experience. Identification and recognition of such evidence does not become a reliable skill just over a matter of a couple of years or through the study of a few short courses. At Gorski Consulting we continue to compile photographic documentation of various tire marks so that we can become better identifiers and interpreters of that evidence.This is no different than any other evidence that is cataloged so that it can be used to uncover the truth in future cases.

What is obvious at the collision site is that the Pacific Coast Highway in this region is accompanied by many cliffs and the border between the cliffs and roadway are not protected by guardrails or other devices that would limit the opportunity for vehicles to accidentally wander into danger. That may not mean anything in the details of this specific  case however any investigator might keep that in the back of their mind while not causing one to develop tunnel vision.

In all, the presence of speculation in this incident is not uncommon. While many attack those who engage in it, our view is that speculation develops when there has been insufficient objective information disclosed about an event. Those who formulate those attacks often fail to ask why more objective information is not revealed as, in so many previous incidents, the insistence on maintaining secrecy is the ultimate problem.

The latest findings from an eight-year-long research study conducted by Gorski Consulting has revealed that 96% of vehicles that go out of control and slide through the opposing lane while travelling around the curve of an 80 km/h highway are never documented in any police data. While these results may appear astounding they are fully supported by actual photographic evidence documented from detailed examinations of the test site where the research has been conducted.

These disturbing results may be related to the specific site where the research is being conducted and it may be questionable how these extreme results may be generalized to other sites. Yet, without anyone conducting research of a similarly detailed nature the specific extent of the problem has to raise some alarms.

The site of the research is located on Clarke Road north of Fanshawe Park Road and Gorski Consulting has reported many previous findings on this website. One of the findings reported in April of 2017 indicated that over 80% of loss-of-control collisions and incidents were not found in the police data of the London City Police Service. That may not be as alarming because one could imagine that there could be many, minor, loss-of-control incidents in the Gorski data that may not warrant reporting. Many of these would not involve the crossing of a centre-line into opposing traffic. While that comment may be partially true, it fails to recognize that many significant incidents were documented in the Gorski data that should have been reported to police but were not.

This latest data is even more compelling because it only looks at the specific incidents where the loss-of-control vehicle was out of control when it crossed through the opposing lane. Twenty-six incidents or such occurrences were documented and only one of these was documented in police records which leads to the 96% value that has been indicated. Five of the most current cases have not yet been verified with police data however examination of the physical evidence indicates that these five vehicles left the collision site without evidence of police involvement.

It is possible that many of these loss-of-control incidents may be occurring at night-time when there are few vehicles travelling through the site and this could be why there have not been any vehicle-to-vehicle impacts in the 26 incidents. While that is a possibility it remains unknown, and cannot be known, without further resources that can monitor the site more closely during night-time hours.

This research raises the question whether police, researchers and government policy-makers are relying on an accurate data-set that allows for a proper understanding of the vehicular loss-of-control problem on our highways.

You know this could end badly!

There are many policy-makers who trust their data and researchers to conclude that something is a good idea. One such good idea was the limiting of truck speeds in Ontario to just over 100 km/h.

That seemed fine because these trucks could be used as road blocks to slow down traffic, particularly on expressways such as Highway 401. There would be less need to send police onto this busy expressway as many serious rear-end impacts have occurred when police make a traffic stop. The fact that speeders might run into the back of a slow truck would also be OK because it would be the speeder who would lose their life or limb and not the slow trucker – or so could be the logic. The additional chaos that might be created as large differences in vehicle speeds became created would be difficult to prove and there would be no need generated to do something about it. Certainly police reports would not high-light the fact that this chaos would exist and this would not reach the traffic data or the analysts who advice the policy-makers. The only fact that would exist is that major rear-end collisions would keep occurring and this could be blamed on irresponsible drivers who were distracted. Truck drivers would be easy targets because they are the ones who would have the greatest difficulty in slowing down when traffic chaos exists.

Certainly the trucker is at fault in many instances but is that the only factor? As an analogy, for many early years there were many machines that cut or crushed material that were fed by an operator who would push the material onto some kind of conveyor belt which would drag the material into the compartment where the cutting and crushing would occur. The obvious advisement to those machine operators was “don’t stick your hand into the crushing/cutting compartment!”. Well, yes, that would seem to be sage advice. But in the environment where the worker is conducting this feeding process repeatedly over many days and months something unintended eventually happens. The worker reaches too far, the worker’s clothing gets caught on a conveyor belt… and so on. And for many years it was deemed to be a worker’s fault. Not paying enough attention. Not until later were various safety devices installed to prevent workers from being dragged into cutting and crushing devices and these accidents were greatly diminished. Is there not a parallel here with the traffic scenario?

Yes, drivers become drowsy and inattentive when subjected to a long time of the mundane task of driving, but is there no way of creating safeguards, much like the crushing/cutting scenario, where persons who make simple mistakes do not have to pay for them with their lives? Limiting truck speeds can be dangerous in some situations where truck drivers get into a situation that requires an immediate and drastic evasive action to avoid disaster. When we take away that driver’s ability to take that evasive action is that no different than removing the safeguards that keep the non-attentive machine operator from being cut or crushed to death? Also, when a heavy truck is involved in a collision it is not always the drowsy truck driver who pays the price, it could be many other innocent drivers in that truck’s vicinity.

Yes, this truck driver made a mistake. But could a fatal collision be avoided if his maximum speed was not limited? The trucker is not the only person who might lose their life in this circumstance.

Ontario’s new Police Act bill has been passed but it is uncertain whether its changes will be beneficial. Increasing the power of certain oversight bodies does not necessarily increase the benefits to society when monitoring and evaluating police actions. The question still boils down to an improvement in justice to all, including the police.

Ontario’s new Police Act bill has reportedly been passed and this marks a major overhaul that has not taken place in over 25 years. What it means exactly is not clear. While certain bodies such as police chiefs, the Special Investigations Unit and the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIRPD) may have greater power, that does not necessarily translate to greater justice and fairness which must be the ultimate goal of any changes. The importance of transparency was discussed in a report by Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Michael Tulloch but it is not clear how this transparency will be improved by the new bill. Will justice be seen to be done or will the public be asked to continue to stumble in the dark while improper decisions are withheld from their evaluation?